Real Men Don’t Shop

Help for the fashion phobic.

Men do not like to take off their pants. In a store.Credit Illustration by ANNETTE MARNAT

This June, a congressman from New York City stepped down from office after it was revealed that he had used his Twitter account to send several women pictures of himself wearing only his underpants. A few months earlier, another congressman, this one from upstate New York, was forced to resign after having been caught sending a woman he’d met on Craigslist a photograph of himself, naked from the waist up. Guys, is it really that difficult for you to shop for clothes? Based on my recent research, escorting an assortment of mostly shopaphobic fellows from one menswear establishment to another in an attempt to expand their sartorial horizons, I’d say the answer is yes.

“Of all the suits you tried on today, which would you buy?” I asked a TV writer after he’d indulged me for many hours by posing in pants and jackets at several stores.

“The blue one,” he said, referring to a smart thin-striped light-wool ensemble by Zegna (Bergdorf Goodman; $2,495). “You want to know why?” he continued. “Because I’m wearing it. I will buy whatever will make it stop.”

What do men find so objectionable about wandering through a shop or two in search of something nice to wear? “I get dizzy in stores.” “I’m not comfortable with another human being that close to me, let alone someone whose only interest in me is that I might buy an overpriced sweater.” “What’s with the European-size thing? How am I supposed to know how to buy clothes on the metric system?” “I have considerable anguish parting with that kind of money.” “I hate having to tote purchases home in garish shopping bags.” “I know I’m like a child, but I work from home and don’t really need clothes. I can wear the same pair of jeans for a week, since I wear them only when I go outside, one hour a day.” “Women have faith in clothes to somehow do something, but I don’t see them having transformative power.” “I’m allergic to wool.” “No matter how old you are, you’re afraid the salesman will suggest that you might have better luck in the department for husky boys.”

Not all men are averse to browsing the racks. Meet P., a lanky ghostwriter and author, who arrived at our shopping appointment in an ancient L. L. Bean tweed jacket, a forest-green crew-neck sweater, a blue button-down oxford shirt from J. Crew, and a gray T-shirt. (According to P., “T-shirts must be colored, because white says Jackie Gleason or geek.”) “The big conundrum for men, when it comes to wardrobe, has to do with caring or not caring,” P. said. “It’s like the first time you fall in love. You have to pretend you don’t love her to your friends, because they’ll tease you. But you love her. It’s the same with fashion. You could call it studied indifference, but, believe me, it’s studied.” P. agreed to take me on a tour of a few stores that he likes, beginning with Brooks Brothers (346 Madison Avenue, at 44th Street). “When I was a little kid in Milton, Massachusetts, Brooks Brothers represented a rite of passage,” he said, as we made our way past tables of ties. He prefers skinny ties, which, he maintains, are harder to find than a decent reading lamp (standard-width striped ties, $79.50-$115). “You would come here with your dad, and if he was sober he’d buy you your first blue blazer with three golden buttons that, back then, looked naval and now have a Scientological flavor” (classic navy junior blazer, $198). Although Brooks, P. says, has lost some of its air of elegant melancholy, it is still a fine place to go for unpretentious staples: khaki summer suits ($398-$598); oxfords that have been burnished to Shaker simplicity ($488); and button-down shirts, which come in no-wrinkle cotton and a wide array of pastels and stripes (avoid the contrast collar unless you need something to wear to your arraignment for corporate malfeasance; $69.50-$135).

Next stop, J. Crew, purveyor of the meticulously offhanded I Don’t Care look. The broken-in chinos appear to have been languishing for years in the bottom drawer at your summer house in Rhode Island; the pre-faded T-shirts insouciantly suggest a laundry accident ($65, $24.50).

“I would wear just about everything here,” P. said. “Except for the madras shorts. You want to look youthful, not ridiculous” ($72.50).

Inside the four-story Beaux-Arts mansion that houses the Ralph Lauren store on the Upper East Side, you will find artifacts from a covetable life. Only some of the goods are for sale, though—not the frayed kilims or the purple felt pool table. What is implicit at J. Crew (no logos) and discreet at Brooks (a minute insignia of a sheep suspended limply from a ribbon, as if it were a sick piñata) is writ large at Ralph Lauren, where an entitled-looking polo player astride a pony, the symbol sometimes three inches tall, is stitched on the bosom region of shirts and knits (polo shirt, $75).

From a female perspective—we women have hundreds of choices of cuts and lengths and hemlines—it’s almost unfair what a well-fitting jacket and trousers can do for a man, regardless of whether he chooses two-button or three (two’s safer unless you’re very tall); one or two vents (two’s easier for sliding into a cab); a peaked or a notched lapel (peaked is trendier, but notched is classic); or an English or an Italian cut (the former is hourglass-shaped and made of heavier wool; the latter’s looser and formed like an inverted V; and, while we’re at it, the American variety is constructed like a sack). Dress codes today are less emphatic about the need for a suit when a sports jacket will do, but you never know when you’re going to be invited to something you don’t deserve to attend.

“I have been known to wear the house jacket at fancy restaurants,” L., the aforementioned TV writer, told the salesman at Paul Stuart (10 East 45th Street), when he joined me there for some suit-shopping research. “I don’t really wear what you’d consider clothes.” His attire that day featured a dinosaur-themed T-shirt and, courtesy of a goody bag from a comedy festival, a fleece-lined khaki jacket. Nevertheless, he tried on suit after suit at Paul Stuart, a company that dresses men who want to look dapper but not so dapper that anyone notices. The store, situated in a three-story building whose autumnal-colored woods and décor make it feel like a law firm, ranks above Brooks Brothers in fashion and price. Mayor Bloomberg is a client. “L. is prominent in the chest, so this is a good model,” the salesman said of a gray striped worsted wool, a mixed marriage of English and American design (ready-to-wear suits, $1,284-$4,984). “This here,” he said, fingering the slightly buckling fabric near the lapel area, “will get alleviated by the tailor.” Phew.

If stores were cookies, Brooks Brothers would be a chocolate chip, Paul Stuart an English tea biscuit, and Bergdorf Goodman Men’s (745 Fifth Avenue, at 58th Street) a perfect petit four. A bit more traditional than the comparable gents’ store at Barneys (gingerbread men with grenadine-foam lips and essence-of-truffle souls), Bergdorf has exquisite Continental suits at exquisite Continental prices. Regarding an Isaia slate-blue number with gray undertones ($2,995), a debonair salesman said, “It’s a little bit of fun, but classic.” “Too shiny,” L. said. Up on the third floor, where things are more “contemporary,” L. tried an Etro Glen plaid with pin dots and a paisley lining ($1,540). “Too much action,” he said. How about a reversible Dries Van Noten jacket—one side red, the other black-and-white check ($925, on sale)? “Something I might wear on a riverboat or getting out of a small car.” What could be wrong with the casual navy flannel suit with striped lining? It was by Thom Browne, the American designer who, a few years ago, introduced an influential line of suits whose skinny trousers and sleeves were cropped so short that the wearer appeared to be dressed in a hand-me-up. This suit, however, was length-appropriate ($2,200). Catching sight of himself in the mirror, L. said, cheerlessly, “It feels as if I have a job.”

In contrast to the shrunk-in-the-wash outfits of Thom Browne are the grownup, gym-toned threads of Tom Ford (845 Madison Avenue, at 70th Street), designed, perhaps, with an Italian James Bond in mind: jackets with wide peaked lapels and high arm holes, sweaters of the cashiest cashmere, loafers in ermine suède that Liberace would kill for (navy mohair blazer, $3,400; gray cable-knit crewneck, $1,180; loafers, $790). Ford’s mausoleum of a showroom, done in marble, metal, and deconstructed crocodile, is no place for the unhip or the chunky. (When the pudgy billionaire photographer Jean Pigozzi complained to Ford that he couldn’t find so much as a handkerchief to buy at the store, the designer told him, “You know why? I don’t want big fat guys like you in my shop.”) Rising to the challenge, I stopped by the boutique accompanied by C., a tall, burly guy who was dressed in a smart plaid custom-made shirt, jeans from the Gap, and black Nike 923s. When the swank gray heather shirt ($525) he tried on wouldn’t button, C. asked a salesman if there was anything else in the store that might fit better. The salesman hesitated, and then, moving his hands down his chest and outward, cupping an imaginary stomach bulge, suggested a sweater.

The John Varvatos boutique (122 Spring Street), offering the designer’s slim-fitting rock-and-roll duds in mostly blacks and grays, did not seem the most promising store for Z., a short, bushy-bearded Brooklyn artist who says that he shops once every couple of years, usually because his clothes have disintegrated. But behold! A sales manager named Genaro Otero has transformed Z. into a cover model for GQ, decking him out in a pre-wrinkled black-and-white plaid shirt ($325); navy linen pants with a matching jacket whose lapel is embedded with wire so that you can modulate the level of rumpledness to match your mood ($345); a gray duster with a metallic sheen ($1,195); a gauzy scarf shading from blue to gray, despite Z.’s insistence that he has no use for non-utilitarian neckwear ($985); and a pair of leather-and-waxed-canvas laceless wingtips that appear to have been left out in the rain ($198). “How am I supposed to stand?” the newly self-conscious Z. asked.

At the large Paul Smith flagship (108 Fifth Avenue, at 16th Street), full of colorful whimsy from the stripe-loving English designer, we meandered from room to room, making note of a washed-silk pirate blouse in a garish floral print that screamed Jimi Hendrix ($615); a pullover with big beige dots, “in case you want to pose as a ladybug” ($315); a metal cockroach key ring ($175); and socks patterned with monster faces (“My socks never match, so the less distinctive they are the better”; $35). Z. deemed the aesthetic “too adventurous,” although he did like the straw trilby hats with star-printed bands ($225). “I’d be very happy if everyone else wore a hat, and then I would, too,” he said.

It’s hard not to be charmed by the people at Seize sur Vingt (78 Greene Street)—the name refers to the French equivalent of an A-minus—whose crisply tailored shirts are cut from fabric with names like Trouble in Suez (blue with green multi-stripe), Ole Miss John Glenn (lavender gingham), the Murder of Roger Ackroyd (blue-and-red check), What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw (navy-yellow-and-pink windowpane), and Adlai Stevenson (white twill; $170 for off-the-rack, $270 for made-to-measure). Custom suits ($2,600-$3,200, in six to twelve weeks) are also available, but, for optimal fit, the tailors in Hong Kong will need to take a look at you. Or, at least, that’s what Karim, the salesman, said the video camera was for.

“O.K., I’ll explain it one more time. Sometimes even very successful careers come to an end, and you have to teach the things you were once paid to do in order to make rent.”Buy the print »

Saying goodbye to Z., I headed off to the Kiton boutique, in a landmark McKim, Mead & White limestone house (4 East 54th Street). The garments from this Neapolitan family-owned firm are so recherché (or do I mean expensive?) that they cannot be worked on by machine. Each suit is the product of twelve to fifteen tailors—a few responsible for the belt loops, others the zipper, and so forth. From bolt of cloth to finished product, a suit undergoes thirty pressings with an antique iron (ready-to-wear, $7,000-$11,000; made-to-measure, $8,500-$42,000, except when made with pure vicuña from Peru, which is $40,000; ties, $250).

If you require more attention than that, Michael Andrews Bespoke (2 Great Jones Alley) will whip up something for you from one of more than five thousand fabrics (price varies according to fabric). The people there are nice, and there is a fully stocked bar.

Men do not like to take off their pants. In a store. Or, rather, they always balk at trying on pants, for nothing makes an ever-widening girth more manifest than a waistband that will not button. Moreover, according to one man I know, “If you’re with your wife, you have to put your wallet and other stuff in the pockets of the clothes you’re trying on, because you don’t want to leave them in the dressing room when you walk out to ask her what she thinks.” Then, there’s the vexing question of size. A recent article in Esquire reports that many trousers are significantly more ample than the marked waist size. This is due to “vanity sizing.” The magazine collected a batch of pants by different manufacturers, all marked as having a thirty-six-inch waist. At H&M, they were actually thirty-seven inches; at Calvin Klein, thirty-eight and a half; at the Gap, thirty-nine; at Dockers, thirty-nine and a half; and, at Old Navy, forty-one.

If this is all too overwhelming, relax. You can order Bills Khakis online (billskhakis.com). Bill and his people offer trousers in twill, poplin, and chamois, and in all sorts of neutral colors, ranging from khaki to British khaki, cement to mushroom, and also weathered red ($115-$165). Or maybe you’d be more comfortable in a Utilikilt, a forgiving, pleated wraparound item that, by male skirt standards, is not un-macho (utilikilts.com; $200-$330 for all models except the Tuxedo, which is $660).

“Once, I wore a tie to the office,” T., a banker, told me. “Everyone asked me, ‘What’s with the tie?’ I’ll never do that again.” Now that every day is casual Friday in many parts of town, don’t you need another pair of jeans so that you never have to do the wash? The deservedly popular Levi’s 501s (straight-legged, button fly) are so hardy that, somewhere, originals from 1890 are probably still being worn (Levi’s, 414 West 14th Street; $58). T., however, is partial to Earnest Sewn jeans. He, his fiancée, and I visited the Earnest Sewn outpost on the Lower East Side (90 Orchard Street), a rustic-looking spot (tin ceiling, vintage photographs, flower shop in the back) that could pass for a general store on the prairie were it not for the $200 dungarees ($180-$220). While T. surveyed the stacks of jeans, bypassing the stylishly ripped pairs (he prefers to wreck them himself) and trying to decide whether light dark blue was better than dark light blue, a sales manager named Jordan Cohen educated me in the differences between men and women shoppers. Men, he said, are quicker to make a sale, more receptive to the guidance of salespeople or innocent passersby (“Women just want your affirmation that they look good”), less concerned with a precise fit, and more likely to buy the same item again and again and often in bulk. To that, I’d add that, while women are afraid of being out of style, men are afraid of looking silly or, truth be told, of even being looked at. It is no wonder, then, that men’s fashion evolves glacially, whereas the minidress on a woman’s back becomes dated before she can even zip it up.

T. was in pursuit of a shirt with a not too billowy midriff, since department-store shirts make him feel as though he’d raided his father’s closet. Until the turn of the twentieth century, the shirt had been worn exclusively as an undergarment. Today, it is a conspicuous piece of a man’s attire, and nobody designs it more tastefully or idiosyncratically than the tailors at the European-inspired boutique Twenty Peacocks (20 Clinton Street; ready-to-wear, $129; custom-made, $145-$195). Made from European fabrics, the shirts resemble classic oxfords and broadcloths, in stripes, solids, and checks, except for a touch of contrast stitching, a button in an unexpected color, or a patch of accenting in another fabric.

“Their clothes are not generic, but not too funky,” T. said. They can be very funky if you choose. One client, for instance, always stipulates that in place of a breast pocket there be a thin fabric sheath to hold a single pen. The shirts are cut narrow, but, according to the hospitable, fashion-savvy Moroccan owner, Mehdi Kabbaj (whose day job is selling insurance), “they won’t make the guy look like he’s on ‘Jersey Shore.’ ” He went on, “Of course, men have an odd notion of how clothes should fit. Have you ever seen the way some guys try on a shirt? They test it by flailing their arms around, as if they need an outfit to fly in.”

Not far away, in Nolita, is Lord Willy’s (223 Mott Street), another clothier who does audacious things with trim. Owned by an English couple, Alex and Betty Wilcox, this tiny shop, whose logo is a silhouette of a chap wearing a shirt with a pocket square and boxers, offers a doozy of a navy blazer with lilac stitching ($1,600); a blue Glen-plaid shirt with Kelly-green buttons (shirts, $205-$285; pocket squares, $55); and some silk ties embroidered with the message “Get Knotted” on the back ($110). Lord Willy’s house plaid, lest you worry, is registered with the Scottish Tartans Authority.

Unless you are a lumberjack, there’s only so much plaid you can contemplate, and it’s easy these days to surpass the limit. Squired around lower Manhattan by M., a recent college graduate with a strict dress code (“I take some flak for my no-shorts position”), I made my way through enough flannels, windowpanes, and plaids, both Glen and buffalo, to outfit the Scottish Ivy League. Steven Alan (229 Elizabeth Street) has a sharp collection of mid-priced reverse-seam button-downs, perfect for wearing to brunch with your parents ($109-$178). At Odin (199 Lafayette Street), a hip but amiable boutique whose labels range from trendy (Engineered Garments) to too-trendy-for-M. (“I have nothing specific against it, I just wouldn’t wear it,” he said, referring to a Commes des Garçons white shirt with black-and-white bib details), we found a shirt in a crisscross plaid of gray, black, and navy blue that M. liked enough to buy ($195).

“I’m a classic carrion eater,” said G., an international journalist, rakishly dressed in a black V-necked sweater by Charles Tyrwhitt, from England, a blazer from John Pearse, chukka boots on their last legs, and black circular glasses that George Orwell might have worn. G. continued, “If I smell meat, I will pounce on it, but I don’t go out for a day of shopping. If I need it, I get it.” That day, he needed a blazer for the road, so we headed to Billy Reid (54 Bond Street). You might saunter into this shop with the intention of buying one thing but find yourself distracted by all the other things, especially after the complimentary glass of barrel-aged bourbon. The majestic showroom is supposed to feel like home—sorry, not yours but the home of someone’s genteel grandmother in, say, Savannah, after the architect fancied it up with floorboards from an old mill, a counter made from Kentucky church pews, and a clothes rack reassembled from a Louisiana apothecary cabinet. The clothes and the accessories are Southern prep: skinny knit ties (“If you roll them up and put them in your shoe, they won’t wrinkle”; $95, reduced to $57); bow ties (“Really, really good, particularly the technically ugly ones”; $95); gray short-sleeved piqué polo shirts (“I could picture a grandfather in 1957 in this or an early 1961 mafioso outside the Desert Sands”; $95); a waxed-canvas blanket-lined khaki coat (no longer available); tweed jackets with suède elbow patches (“Everyone needs a good tweed in his life, and by that I mean hideously loud”; no longer available); antique brass cufflinks ($95); and a shotgun case ($595).

“For someone who never looks nice, I am very picky about clothes,” said D., a freelancer, who, the day of our shopping jaunt, was wearing a moth-eaten sweater from Banana Republic and a pair of Levi’s 501s from Dave’s (581 Sixth Avenue, at 17th Street). Dave’s is a great outlet for jeans, Army surplus, and work clothes, and it’s D.’s favorite store, because he can shop there in less than seven minutes (Red Wing boots, $125-$279; webbed belt, $3). Quickly, then: at the SoHo branch of the Japanese chain Uniqlo (546 Broadway, between Prince and Spring Streets), where the blaring music and the hangar-size rooms remind one of Eero Saarinen’s T.W.A. terminal, we most admired a single-breasted trenchcoat in a smart synthetic navy fabric, reasonably priced at $100. “Very Audrey Hepburn,” D. said, trying it on. “And isn’t that just what you want in a man’s raincoat? The lining’s nice, too.”

Next stop was Freemans Sporting Club (8 Rivington Street), a haunt for men who much prefer shopping for the outdoors to being in the outdoors (and who also want to get a haircut and a shave, $42 each). In case you missed the message sent by the pinecones in baskets on metal shelves, the lanterns illuminating taxidermied animals, and the library consisting of books by male authors (except for Willa Cather), let’s eavesdrop on a customer wearing a flannel shirt and sturdy boots: “Yeah, Sarah’s doing great. She’s making candles—in her kitchen.” At Freemans, you can acquire suspenders ($95), a belt with a brass double-ring clasp ($129), a dive watch ($1,750), and plenty of manly American-made fittings, including a wool herringbone jacket with leather buttons ($1,350), a suit made from a basket-weave fabric whose blues and yellows shimmer in the sunlight (“Too much like sound-speaker fabric,” D. said; $2,000), and a plush black cashmere coat, Teflon-coated, which makes it stormproof and perfect for politicians ($2,400).

In fashion and sports, men follow rules. “As long as you know the conventions of dressing, you won’t have any problems,” P., who is no relation to the previously mentioned P., said. What are the conventions? “I don’t know,” he said. “That’s the problem.” He had on a black belt and brown shoes, in shocking disregard of one of the forty-five tips laid out in the slim volume “Anything Other Than Naked: A Guide for Men on How to Dress Properly for Every Occasion.” (Belts and shoes should be the same color.) Other tips include “Wear over-the-calf socks”; “Learn to put a dimple in your tie”; “Always keep an extra pair of shoelaces on hand”; “Never dress more casually than your client”; and “Don’t wear a raincoat over a tuxedo.” They forgot the tip “Don’t listen to all tips.”

“The look I’m striving for,” said A., a commercial litigator, “is ‘business boring.’ For me, even a striped shirt would be stepping out.” A. is a particularly hard shopaphobia case. We met at Saks (611 Fifth Avenue, at 50th Street), a vender not above catering to the legal profession but also able to accommodate natty doctors as well as the occasional artist. He was in need of some very unassertive ties. Albert Einstein once said, “Once you accept the universe as being something expanding into an infinite nothing which is something, wearing stripes with plaid comes easy.” Even so, A. ruled a Zegna mosaic pattern in blue and gold ($185-$195) “too interesting,” a Brioni geometric ($195) “too nice,” and, regarding a Paul Smith floral ($136), he merely said, “Whoa!” Unable to convince A. that brown and blue really do go together, I gave up and let a take-charge salesman at Barneys (660 Madison Avenue, at 61st Street) sell him a safe Armani blue striped tie ($180). He gave a big sigh of relief as his purchase was being packaged. The next day, A.’s wife sent me a thank-you e-mail. ♦

Sign up for the daily newsletter.Sign up for the daily newsletter: the best of The New Yorker every day.